Herolike – My Experience

Herolike is a hack n’ slash indie RPG developed by GamesHut,a one-man team. The game is in its Beta phase at the moment.

The gameplay is pretty good, I can compare it to the style of Diablo 3 (enemies have the same movement patterns ). The game has a pretty interesting concept. There are 4 different situations you can encounter: hostile, friendly, gamble and defend. Upon the arrival in a Hostile situation, you have to hold off against several waves of monsters in order to progress further up. Friendly situations offer you the occasion to use dialogue. Usually, you encounter random travelers in which you solve the problem between them by choosing one of the available dialogue options. Gamble situation has a 50-50 chance of you being attacked or solving a problem,and Defend consists of you defending a crystal against hordes of monsters.

The combat in the game is good, combos flow together, the character’s actions are extremely responsive, spells work well together, you are always on the moving, but it gets repetitive quite fast. You can choose between two classes, Guardian and Shaman (basically melee or ranged). It also has increased difficulty, represented by the high-amount of damage the enemies deal to you, which makes you concentrate on it. On Top of that, the concentration element dies off because of the fact that if your character dies, you have to start all over again. I personally find it frustrating that it is mandatory of me to concentrate so hard on not dying in order to progress through the game, it’s a gimmick I do not agree of and they should re-think this.

You also dispose of a Town, in which you can buy items that enhance your characters attributes, health potions and the such. You have the option to build numerous buildings throughout your town, which require materials in order to build them. The buildings vary, from Weapons Merchant (more weapons to choose from upon levelling up), Armor Merchant (more armor to choose from upon levelling up), Scavenger’s Guild, which you can use to issue scavenging parties throughout the realm.

As for the level progression, I have found it extremely unsatisfying. It’s interface reminds me of the level progression from Mobile Games such as Angry Birds, in which you have to complete one mission in order to unlock the other and so on. No free-roaming outside your town is included here as well, which restricts the player to explore on his own, the effect being a boring universe, with not much to do except solving the problems of the people.

The storyline is almost inexistent. You are a Hero tasked with fighting the forces of Evil, but that’s it. There is no depth to it, no other detail that would make it more immersive, or at least that’s what I got from the 35+ mission levels I have played until now. They should do something about it, because a well crafted story could have a bigger impact on the player’s opinion of the game.

The graphics have a fairly peculiar design. It is in no way special, but it is attractive and pleasant to the eye. A combination of different animations and effects such as the dust coming behind you as you run around, the movement is fluent and I did not come across any major visual/graphic bugs. The only aspect I do not like are the combat animation. You just swing your axe the same way for as many times as necesarry to kill an enemy. A more varied set of animations would be most welcomed. To conclude, Herolike is a game which has some interesting concepts,but it’s repetitive shenanigans and bad storyline does not quite make it a game above the line. Given the fact that this game has been developed by a single person, the effort is clearly visible, but for it to truly shine I recommend more work to be done.